Whenever he passed the sprawling E.J. Brach factory on Cicero Avenue, he would eye the massive buildings lording over crowded parking lots, and would tell himself that this too would slip away.

Yet when rumors spread several years ago about problems at Brach, and the company began laying off workers, Davis and others didn't wait and watch. They put their minds on keeping the West Side's biggest employer alive.

"We just could not stand back and let the community take a hit," said Davis, himself a laid-off worker from a Sears warehouse on the West Side, who now heads a church-community organization known as the Garfield Austin Interfaith Action Network.

His fears have yet to come true. The Brach factory is still there.

And a critical moment for the plant may come Sunday when its workers, members of Teamsters Union Local 738, vote on a contract offer from the company that follows months of bitter bargaining. Union members narrowly turned down a similar company offer last week by vote of 286 to 276.

But this is not just about saving companies.

It is about what happens when fear races through a community and among workers that a major employer will disappear and hundreds of middle-class jobs will be washed away.

It is about what follows when the trust between a company and its workers and its neighbors wears so thin it almost disappears.

And in the case of Brach, it also is about Chicago: its history and identity as a gritty, factory-cluttered place where ambitious workers and immigrants and businesses could do well.

Founded 90 years ago by a German immigrant in his Near North Side sweet shop with $1,000, Brach became one of the candy industry's giants nationwide, its products geared to average consumers.

Its largely middle-aged, 1,700-member work force is one part black, one part Latino and one part white, many of the latter Greek, Italian or Polish immigrants, some of whom need translations at union meetings to find out what's going on.

For the time being, the view is somewhat upbeat.

Union officials, who met with the company last week, say the company's latest offer has improved wording on seniority and severance issues, and that should swing the votes needed for its approval.

But there is still a void, and it is the union and the community's disbelief that despite its repeated vows, Brach will remain in Chicago.

"We are not moving. I don't know if we can make them believe that. We've been here for 90 years and we plan on being here for 90 more," said Terri Kaminski, a company spokeswoman.

The disbelief was triggered several years ago by changes that convinced experts and workers that Brach was, indeed, in trouble.

Since its 1986 sale by American Home Products Corp. to Klaus Jacobs, a Swiss businessman, the company has had nine chief executives. It has cut its work force from 3,500 in 1988 to 1,700 today. It has lost money for six of the last eight years; it reported a small operating profit for the most recent year.

And its total sales volume has fallen 36 percent since 1988, figures compiled by the Midwest Center for Labor Research show.

A shiver ran through the West Side in 1990. Brach threatened to shut the plant and move the work to Mexico or Canada if it did not win federal approval to import sugar at world trade prices.

It didn't get the approval. Within months, however, the company was able to stave off a move by laying off workers as well as streamlining and automating operations, Kaminski said.

Another fright came in November. The company said it was merging with Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Brock Confections Inc.

Workers, who had witnessed the recent closing of some factory operations, assumed the company would soon shift work to its new partner. But the company said that would not happen.

Without access to Brach's plans, however, there is reason to worry about the plant's future in Chicago, said Wim Wiewel, an urban expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"The fact the plant manager tells you they are not moving doesn't mean much," he said. "They don't know much more than the community."

The plant's fate was at the core of the bargaining between the union and Brach to replace the contract that expired last July.

Union officials say they wanted to make sure the new contract would help the company survive. Claiming its $13.50-an-hour average wage is twice as high of most of its competitors, Brach asked the union to limit its wage demands.

The union agreed to put off pay increases for the first two years of the contract, followed by 2 percent and 3 percent raises in the last two years of the agreement.